POLL: SAS is Almost Here! -UPDATED-

[Googer]

Originally posted by: sigpop
right, its almost like who cares unless its price competitive with the alternatives and it gets integrated into mainstream mobos.

It's likely to never get intergrated into or onto motherboards. Intergrated HDD Controllers offer poor performance when compaired to a "QUALITY" 3rd party add on controller card. It's like saying my on board audio sounds great, who would ever need to spend $100 on an M-audio sound card or $200 on an Audigy?

 

[ribbon13]

Exactly... I would only expect to see SAS integrated on Server/Workstation boards anyway.

If SAS drives are anything under $600 for 15krpm 16mb 73GB, I'll be an early adopter.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
SAS is to SCSI what SATA is to ATA/IDE

What did SATA do for ATA/IDE?

Except for Raptor drives, SATA has brought no performance increase.

But, it bought more fragile SATA cables...
It brought the annoyance of loading SATA drivers onto the floppy when installing in a new motherboard...
It brought increased prices over IDE drives
It resulted in motherboards having less IDE connectors, increasing all the annoyances associated with buying more SATA drives...

Hopefully SAS will do much more for SCSI than SATA did for IDE.

The reality of the computer world is that too many technologies like AGP 8X, PCIe, SATAI/SATAII have for the most part brought 0 improvement for real world applications. And everyone of these introduction have promised amazing gains when they were hyped back in the days.

 

[ribbon13]

No master slave worries. thinner cables. reduced controller latency. more available ports for a single IRQ.

say again?

 

[ribbon13]

If I desigend a motherboard there would be zero IDE channels.
and would include one of these.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-998-001&depa=0

 

[ribbon13]

As for SATA drivers... obviously your not familiar with slipstreaming drivers onto a cd.

Go here to learn how.
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
No master slave worries. thinner cables. reduced controller latency. more available ports for a single IRQ.

say again?

Master slave worries? it takes 1 min to plug in the jumper but unlimited amount of time for an inexperienced user to try and install a SATA drive (that comes with no floppy of those drivers or instructions how to install it and get windows to recognize it)

Reduced controller latency? And this matters because IDE is still as fast as SATA and sometimes faster so that's like saying DDR2 667 is faster than DDR400 because it has faster speed. Who cares if it brought reduced latency, in the real world there is no difference between 160gb IDE and 160gb SATA.

Don't get me wrong, I welcome new technology because it "readies" the market when the time is ready. But companies generally are in business to make money. SATA/AGP8X/PCIe are all marketing-money making strategies. The average user wants to see a performance difference, which none of those have brought -> but they did bring increased prices.
More available ports...sure but with 400gb hard drives available now, who needs 8 hard drive ports?

 

[ribbon13]

Oh. I dunno, professionals? RAIDs? Not everyone runs a pc for fun. Servers use SCSI, and wanted to serialize it. SATA was the perfect test bed. Now SAS will soon be here. Adapt or fade away!

 

[ribbon13]

Name 1, just one sata controller, seperate or onboard, that comes without a driver disk? If a user can't figure out SATA or where to ask for help they shouldn't have a PC

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
Name 1, just one sata controller, seperate or onboard, that comes without a driver disk? If a user can't figure out SATA or where to ask for help they shouldn't have a PC

My friend bought a WD74 gig hard drive and Asus K8V motherboard last September. Neither shipped with the driver disk. I previously didnt have experience installing SATA on a computer and found the process to be a lot less smooth then connecting IDe drives. The point here is, even if SATA is better than IDE, the advantage of SATA over IDE is 0.00000001%. Now the amount of strides taken in say videocard industries when videocard companies double speed in 1 year is something to get excited about. It took hard drives 5 years or so to double performance, if that. Even now notebooks ship with 4200rpm hard drives (specs that sound like they are 10 years old) And how serious were the improvements made by SATA to hard drive industry in comparison to say PS2.0 in videocard industry or LCD in monitor industry or dedicated sound card in the sound industry? Just ask yourself if SATA disappeared tomorrow, how many ppl would actually care?

 

[ribbon13]

The motherboard should have came with one, so that's Asus's fault, not SATA's. I bet it came with a driver cd though.

Given time SATA will have generic drives like IDE. Were you around when IDE first came out?

 

[CQuinn]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

My friend bought a WD74 gig hard drive and Asus K8V motherboard last September. Neither shipped with the driver disk.

Did the motherboard come with a driver CD? The drivers for the SATA controller should be on that. And (as has been pointed out)
it should have been packaged with a floppy too.

I previously didnt have experience installing SATA on a computer and found the process to be a lot less smooth then connecting IDe drives.

I find it currently about the same as when I had to install drivers for my SCSI controller.

The point here is, even if SATA is better than IDE, the advantage of SATA over IDE is 0.00000001%.

I think you are looking in the wrong place for examples of advantages.

Now the amount of strides taken in say videocard industries when videocard companies double speed in 1 year is something to get excited about. It took hard drives 5 years or so to double performance, if that.

If you are looking at hard drive performance, then you have to also take capacity into account. An area which has exceeded just
about every other area of the industry in per year growth in the last decade.

Even now notebooks ship with 4200rpm hard drives (specs that sound like they are 10 years old)

Notebook drives are designed to run on less power, thus saving battery life. And as above, the "performance" increase
on notebook drives has been in the increased capacity over that time frame. Increasing capacity does lend to an
increase in transfer speed without having to change to a faster motor.

And how serious were the improvements made by SATA to hard drive industry in comparison to say PS2.0 in videocard industry or LCD in monitor industry or dedicated sound card in the sound industry?

The improvements from changing over to SATA are still occuring within the industry, just like all your other examples, it is not something
you can point to as having an effect overnight. We are only now starting to see drives with native (not bridged) SATA support, and that
bring NCQ and hot swap as features of the spec to the table.

Just ask yourself if SATA disappeared tomorrow, how many ppl would actually care?

A lot more than you think. Not every technology is designed from the start with the budget end-user in mind.

 

[ribbon13]

I think he was just trying to start a flamewar. One he lost quickly... this isn't the place to poo on new and emminently useful technologies.

 

[Pariah]

Flamewars aside. I asked above for someone to name one new feature of SAS that P-SCSI doesn't have that any of us should be interested about. Unless I missed it, I still haven't seen one. There is nothing new in SAS that will benefit any of us, except the small cables, which is hardly a reason to switch.

 

[Vegito]

Master slave worries? it takes 1 min to plug in the jumper but unlimited amount of time for an inexperienced user to try and install a SATA drive (that comes with no floppy of those drivers or instructions how to install it and get windows to recognize it)

Drivers are required because SATA came out after WINXP, wait for the next Windows release and it'll have drivers on cd

During windows 2000, you had to hit f6 for scsi drivers, with XP & server 2003, you dont except for the newer controller..

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: Pariah
Flamewars aside. I asked above for someone to name one new feature of SAS that P-SCSI doesn't have that any of us should be interested about. Unless I missed it, I still haven't seen one. There is nothing new in SAS that will benefit any of us, except the small cables, which is hardly a reason to switch.

One advantage is scalabilty. Another is Higher Bandwith and backward compatabilty with desktop technology. SAS alows for 16,384 devices or drives to be connected while scsi is usulaly limited to 16 devices for scs2 and I believe it's 32 or 64 for the latest revisions of U320 scsi. So you wanted some well I gave you some. Also one of SCSI's weakness are the fact that all devices share a common bus that is limited to a maximum of 320 MB/s; 3 to 4 15k HDD's could easly satuarte that banwith with out trouble. Manufacturers are coming out with it's replacement BEFORE ITS TOO LATE. SCSI is great Basicly to sum it all up scsi is one kick ass technology that has served us well beyond it's original intended purpose, but the road is comming to an end for SCSI soon and its about time we all give it one last salute and say good by to an old friend.

SATA and PATA are only half duplex technologies while SCSI and SAS are FULL DUPLEX.
http://www.lsilogic.com/technologies/industry_standards/sas.html

 

[Pariah]

That's zero reasons. The question was why any of us, as home users, should care in the slightest. A dual channel U320 card capable of 640MB/s combined and handling 30 drives at once is not even in the slightest a bottleneck to any home user I've ever seen. In case you didn't notice, SAS is also limited to 300MB/s per channel which is actually slower than current U320. Wow, now I can use 16,000 drives in my computer? That's sounds like a highly practical setup in my room.

I'm still waiting for reason #1.

 

[ribbon13]

You mean 3000 Gbps before ECC?

The technical aspects make it far easier to have multiple channels. That's why serial is so great. For the price of a dual U320 card, its likely you could make a 16 channel SAS card for the same cost.

How's that for a benefit on the manufacturers side?

Which means a 2-4 port SAS controllers would be easily within the reach of the common man, and could use your current SATA drives with it. Even your IDE opticals could be SCSI devices on the local bus... =D

 

[HannibalTheCannibal]

Everyone keeps saying that RAID is too much for desktop user. Why would anyone need a new interface like that? SCUZZY's are way too expensive for the desktop.

 

[ddviper]

ya r sas gunna b super duper expensive like SCSI r now?

 

[Pariah]

You mean 3000 Gbps before ECC?

No, I mean three Gbps, pre-CRC and overhead, or 300MB/S data bandwidth, the same as SATA II, which will be one way compatible. Second generation SAS will be 6Gbps, or 600MB/s data.

For the price of a dual U320 card, its likely you could make a 16 channel SAS card for the same cost.

Yea right, because we know conpanies always pass the savings right on to the consumer. I mean look how much cheaper SATA controllers are now compared to P-ATA controllers. You can get a nice U160 controller for $40 now, which is cheaper than a SATA controller. Without a reduction is drive cost, it matters not. SAS is not going to make the drives any cheaper to produce.

Also, SAS is capable of 128 devices per channel. A little bit below the above mentioned 16,000 whatever, yet still way beyond what any of us should care about.

Edit again:

I see where the 16,256 (not 16,384) came from. You can connect SAS drives to multiple controllers, in essence creating a giant storage network of controllers and drives for better redundancy. Interesting for the enterprise market. Not applicable to home market.

 

[ribbon13]

oops... you knew what i meant. 3Gbps.

Well, how about the flexibility of getting a nice high quality SAS card, running your current HDD's on it, then getting high end SAS drives. It spread the high end financial hit. It's pretty hard to jump from P/SATA straight to SCSI right now.

 

[Pariah]

How about I have a free SATA controller on my motherboard so I don't need such a capability.

You starting to see the picture here? SAS offers nothing of interest to any of us that current SCSI doesn't already provide.

 

[MichaelD]

Solid Axle Swap?

You have an older Independent Front Suspension SUV/Pickup and you're swapping in a solid front axle?

How cool!!!

 

[eplebnista]

Are you Interested in SAS Technology?

No.